While Columbus was exploring the coast of Cuba, near the island of Evangelista, on the twelfth of June, it is said that he, for the purpose of furnishing indisputable evidence that he had reached the dominions of the Grand Khan, sent Fernando Perez de Luna, his notary, with four attesting witnesses, to the vessels, and had each person on board to make a declaration under oath that he was convinced that the land he saw was a part of the continent of Asia, and that he believed any one could go from it by land to Spain.[180] The notary, when taking the depositions, it is said, informed each person giving this testimony, that should he for any malicious purpose afterward assert a different opinion, he would, if an officer, be made to pay a penalty of ten thousand maravedis for such an offence, and if a person of lower rank, he would receive a hundred lashes and have his tongue cut out.[181] Strange as it seems, it was Columbus’s belief that this watery expanse was really the gulf of the Ganges.[182] Departing from the island of Evangelista, Columbus returned along the coast of Cuba to Cabo de Santa Cruz, from which he steered to the island of Jamaica. After leaving it, he discovered the two islands lying off the east coast of Española, called respectively by the Indians Adamanai and Mona. On the twenty-ninth of September, 1494, he returned to Isabela. The people of the island of Española having acquired some knowledge of the Spanish language, were able at this time to give Columbus considerable information respecting their religion. From his conversations with them he was enabled to write the following account of their peculiar image-worship: “I could discover neither idolatry nor any sect among them, though each one of their kings, who are very many, as well in Española as on all the other islands and continent, has a house apart from the town, in which there is nothing but some carved, wooden images that are called _cemies_. There is nothing done in these houses but what is for the service of the _cemies_, to which they repair to perform certain ceremonies, and pray there, as we do in our churches. In these houses they have a handsome, round table, made like a dish, on which is some powder, which they lay on the heads of the _cemies_ with a certain ceremony. Then through a cane, that has two branches, held to their own nostrils they snuff up this powder. The words they use none of our people understand. The powder intoxicates them, and they act as if they were drunk. They also give the image a name, and I believe it is that of their father or grandfather, or both; for they have more than one, and some more than ten, all in memory of their forefathers, as I have already said. I have heard them praise one more than another, and have observed them to have more devotion, and show more respect to one than another, as we do in processions in time of want; and the people and the caciques boast among themselves of having the best _cemies_.